If a nuke drops and CNN isn't there to report it, does anyone hear?

The stupidest goddamned idea I've heard in a long time, too [thanks, Atrios].

...At this point, I think I need to bring up what one might call the Craziest Goddamn Thing I've Heard In a Long Time. This story came to me last week from an anonymous individual who I would say is in a position to know about such things. According to this person, the DOD has (naturally) been doing some analysis on airstrikes against Iran. The upshot of the analysis was that conventional bombardment would degrade the Iranian nuclear program by about 50 percent. By contrast, if the arsenal included small nuclear weapons, we could get up to about 80 percent destroying. In response to this, persons inside the Office of the Vice President took the view that we could use the nukes -- in other words, launch an unprovoked nuclear first strike against Iran -- and then simply deny that we'd done so. Detectable radiation in the area of the bombed sites would be attributed to the fact that they were, after all, nuclear facilities we'd just hit.

Somebody tell these idiots that fissile uranium in a chain reaction puts out a whole different particle spectrum than just blowing up a nuclear reactor with TNT.

And that you can detect it from the other side of the planet.

Morons. But what else do you expect from a C-average cheerleader from Yale?